After reading a lot of posts about "tube rolling" - especially with headphone amps - I just had to comment.....
I've been around tubes for a lot of years. When I was in high school (late 1970's), tubes were "on the way out" and tube equipment could be had for pretty much nothing at garage sales and flea markets. Most of the few remaining bits of tube equipment in use were things like test equipment (a LOT of those old Tektronix scopes with thirty or forty, or even more, 12AX7's and 12AU7's in them). The last big box of 12AX&'s I saw ended up in a trash bin because nobody wanted them. My point, however, is this......
In those days (when those NOS tubes people are paying so much for today were actually NEW) we didn't consider them to be very much different. In fact, they were considered pretty much interchangeable. We would cheerfully mix and match Mullards, Telefunkens, and RCAs.... nobody considered one to be especially better than the other. (Some designations, like GA, GB, etc specified lower noise, or specific gain characteristics - but my point is that nobody ever felt that a given brand, or "plate style" or "plate color" SOUNDED any better than any other.) Sure, we considered Gold Lions to be a "premium brand"... but, in those days, that meant we expected them to last a bit longer... and so we were willing to pay $15 apiece instead of $10. All the other manufacturers CLAIMED that their version was better, but nobody much heard any useful difference, and so nobody believed them. In fact, if a certain amp made them sound different, then we considered it to be a poor design - since the design should ideally be entirely independent of the tubes. if we matched "peanut tubes", it was so the whole row of them were the same size and color... at most.
To anybody who was serious about audio back when tubes really WERE "current", the whole idea that a certain Telefunken 12AX7 with a certain plate shape is somehow "better" than an RCA (or is worth hundreds of dollars more) is just silly. To us, it seems a bit like "beer aficionados" sitting around discussing spending hundreds of dollars for various five year old supermarket six-packs. Sure, a five year old can of Bud will probably taste different than a five year old can of Mick, and it'll probably also taste different than a NEW bottle of Bud...
but that doesn't mean you'd pay $200 for that difference.
Sure, tubes sound slightly different, so, by all means, try different ones.... but there's no good reason to specifically expect some rare old German tube to sound better than some cheap new Russian one... "rare" has nothing to do with "good". (OK, some new Russian and Chinese brands in specific really are SUBstandard... but that doesn't "prove" that every old rare one is good.) Those tubes that are going for hundreds of dollars today really WERE nothing more than supermarket brands when they were originally sold.... (and, for anyone who thinks that "old" and rare equate with valuable, I have some old junk .... er.... treasures... from my basement that I'll be glad to sell you for a truly ridiculous amount of money...
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